Dwarf Fortress News

Hey everybody!

This time we have a look at the expansive cavern system that you can find underneath your fortress.



There are all sorts of mushrooms down there, which Patrick has prepared for you. Big ones, little ones, really big ones... in the image above we have tower caps and fungiwood growing in the subterranean water pools, and the floor is entirely covered with smaller fungus. The largest multitile growths can be used for lumber if you manage to reach them and recover the fallen material, and the smaller ones can be used for food, dye, and clothing. These can also be cultivated. Your dwarves can use the water for all sorts of purposes, especially if the surface level lacks a river or brook. (We still have to handle the blue water behind the tree images, and the ramps cut off prematurely sometimes.)



Since the largest mushrooms occupy multiple vertical levels, you see slices of them as you move up and down through the levels of your fortress. In the gif, we start at the mossy floor with a spattering of webs and small vegetation (and a cave ogre) and move up three levels, viewing the caps as they round out at their tops.



You can see three different gem clusters in this image of a lichen floor. The open cavern makes it easier to prospect for ore and other useful minerals, but also leaves you exposed to visits from various creatures if you don't take precautions!

- Tarn

Hi again!

This time I've brought some elves, the third of the major critters you can find in the game, after dwarves and humans.



Brought to you by Mike, they are slighter than humans, as we can see here, and their hair comes in autumn colors, though some have mossy green or silvery white. I have everybody in the same clothing here to focus on the physical features. (Note that some of the beards of the dwarves have been shaved since my creature placer doesn't respect their normal customs.)



These elves grow wooden weapons and armor and don't like to trade any items made from butchered animals or wood they suspect came from felled trees. In the image above, you can see their heavy armor, and a more lightly armored warrior, with some humans in metal equipment for comparison.



And this is the variety of their typical clothing, using profession colors. A few of these professions are atypical for elves, but you can find them in human settlements where they'll often find themselves working in jobs that don't exist in their forest retreats, even those wood-working professions which the elves living among the trees might find offensive. Similarly, fully-acclimated city elves don't appreciate that forest elves eat the people they kill in the ongoing timber skirmishes, so it kind of evens out.

- Tarn

Hello!

Statues are one of the pieces of furniture in Dwarf Fortress. You generally use them to increase the value of a room, or as the center of a room when you designate an area to be a sculpture garden. This is a place for dwarves to hang out and admire the architecture, which generally makes them happy. The statues can depict particular people, historical events, abstract shapes, artifacts, and more. Of course, up to this point, we used the same text symbol for every statue, made the material give it one of a few colors, and left the rest to a sometimes lengthy paragraph description, including whatever engravings or other decorations might be found on the object.



After Patrick drew lots of new images and adapted many additional images to the statue format, we're finally able to begin showing some portion of the details! This is my coati hall, with eight coatis and a coati person. There's also a sunfish enjoying some time in the waves under the moon. The colors of the statue give some indication of their material, various stones I located in the mines. It's a strange room, and I shouldn't be in charge of decorating anything, but my dwarves enjoy the space, because they don't know any better. There's also a visiting human monster hunter there, possibly confused.



The pedestal indicates the quality of the statue, and also reflects all of the decorations (spikes, hanging rings, engravings, etc.) Damage and spatter are also indicated. This statue has been encrusted with oval cabochons and given little menacing spikes.

- Tarn

Hi!

This time in Adventures in Clicking on the Main Screen, we have workshops!  

(Please click-through for a bigger image)

This window has popped up after clicking the mason's workshop. In the old Dwarf Fortress, looking at the items in a workshop and looking at the tasks to be performed at a workshop were two separate commands. Now that information has been combined into one window.  (Like last time, none of the interface art is final here.)

There are various ways to interact with tasks and items which are now accessible through the little buttons. These include setting up repeat tasks, high priority tasks, shuffling the order of the tasks in the list, examining the details of the task in the list, suspending a task, and cancelling a task.

In the bottom list, the distinction between the two pieces of granite is that one of them makes up the physical workshop (the one with the house-shaped building icon), and the one at the end with the 'TASK' icon is the one currently being worked on in the active task. The other icons allow you to do some of the actions also accessible from the lower left menu - forbidding items, dumping items, melting items (not pictured here since none of these are meltable), and hiding items.

(Please click-through for a bigger image)

Here's what you get when you add a new task. The potential task list alphabetized now and has a search filter. I've changed some of the old job names to make the alphabetization work.

All of this can run unpaused (also new).  Missing is the ability to rename the building, the worker profiles, and the ability to destroy the building.  Those'll all be in soon.

I've also redone the old jeweller's workshop screen (the old gem cutting interface was very baroque, to say the least.) It now works like a regular workshop. The same is true of seven other workshops previously inaccessible to our modding infrastructure. They all work like regular workshops now (the loom, the mechanic's workshop, the dyer, etc.)


- Tarn

[h2]Kitfox's Note[/h2]

Hello folks! Just a quick wee message from myself to say, happy (belated) birthday Scamps!🎉 I couldn't resist getting this birthday boy in here this week and, with full blessings from Tarn, I can share a new picture with you of the third Dwarf Fortress developer.

(Please click-through for a surprise image!)

Thanks and speak to you soon!

-Fiona